I spend much of my life these days with my flowers, watering them, dead-heading them, moving them around, digging holes, pulling out weeds, planting them, and worrying that they will all be gone in days. So far, so good; I am loving every minute of it. Gardening looked simple to me before I started doing it, but it doesn’t look simple now.

One thing I’ve discovered about my flowers is that the single images I’ve always seen of them rarely capture their color,  emotion, and depth.

They are alive, living, and dying together from the first day. They are never the same two days in a row.

In my photography, I always try to capture flowers as a community, not one thing, but many. Flowers are aware of one another; they are always reaching out to one another, and if I step back and watch, as I do every morning and several times a day,  I see something different – flowers in context, flowers connected one to the other, flowers that fight to get near each other, flowers that are a community in every sense of the word. I can’t capture the one without capturing the other.

I don’t see flowers as one thing, but many things often struggle to come together like human beings. They do a better job than we do.

I hope to focus on that idea in the coming weeks and months before the first hard frost. I’ve got some time and mean to use it well.

This is a significant flower show to me, another turning point, another lesson in focus, position, and light, and I’m happy to present it here on my blog free of charge. I think it’s a different direction. I’ve been working on it for a week or so. I’m ready to share.

Make some popcorn or frame some cheese doodles, and make yourself at home. I hope you enjoy my show. And thanks for supporting my work.

Each of these pictures represents a different community of flowers. I see them very much connected to each other.

 

 

This star perfectly contrasts the blue flowers all around it, almost like a centerpiece.

Some Nastiurums snuck into this community; it won’t last there.

 

 

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This community was born as a still-life painting and still looks that way.

 

 

This community is on a self-made hill, starting with white, then red, then yellow, green, and purple. It seems like one thing to me.

 

The strawberry field is not like any other flower I see. It just screams for attention.

The Tin Man is a community all of his own. What a great place for him to be. The flowers are all over him. I imagine Ed Gulley is watching and smiling.